Howard runs Homonoff Media Group, which provides its clients (leading media enterprises, institutional investors, and trade associations) with the tools to seize dynamic opportunities and manage extraordinary risks, particularly for companies in the media business or looking to partner with media companies. He serves as Senior Fellow at the Columbia Institute on Tele-Information at Columbia Business School where he is Executive Producer and Host of the cable program “Media Reporter,” and speaks frequently at events before industry groups. You can follow Howard on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (@howardbh1) and through www.homonoffmedia.com.

The Business of Caring: Five Reasons to Love Sports (Media)

I don’t know about you, but for me it’s been an exhausting month as a sports fan. Last week the curtain came down on the frenetic Major League Baseball trading deadline, the culmination of weeks of furious social media speculation. Shortly before that came the opening of National Football League training camps, with the annual summer rite of universal hope filling in for fall’s unpredictable wins and losses. And just before that came the culmination of the modern day rebuke to Thomas Wolfe as LeBron James did indeed go home again to his once (and apparently current and future) beloved Cleveland and the National Basketball Association’s Cavaliers.

Man, it’s been exhausting. But what about the games themselves you say? Weren’t there any actual games during that month? OK, there was a little thing called the World Cup. But in all of the major American team sports, the games have taken a huge backseat lately. In fact, the overwhelming flood of sports news reminds me of a variation on the bandits’ taunt of Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: “Games? We don’t need no stinkin’ games!”

Yes, games do of course attract eyeballs and are ultimately a necessary “evil” for the sports business (the “evil” comes from the incredible expense of broadcasting rights to distribute the actual games, the inability to control the outcome, favorite players getting hurt, etc.). But I actually find, somewhat oddly perhaps, that it’s all the other stuff that really helps make sports-related media such a tremendous business today and going forward:

1. Passionate fans creating a social media marketers’ dream

Roger Angell, the wonderful baseball writer and recent Hall of Fame inductee, once wrote that what makes sports so alluring is “the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately.” (He wasn’t literally referring to “business” but it’s just as applicable here). It’s not rational for middle-aged people (mostly men) to paint their faces, bare their chests, and buy matching $200 jerseys for every member of their family (hello merchandisers!) – unless their favorite team is involved. When advertising is filled with buzzwords today such as “sentiment”, “affinity”, and “engagement”, sports fans fit that bill to a tee. We now have a $70 billion industry – fantasy sports – built on passionate fandom with stunningly low costs of entry and operation. “Social” media (not to mention talk radio) seems to have been designed precisely for a world where fans not only want but almost need to interact and argue endlessly about their teams’ past, present and future.

2. The flood of reality programming

Beginning with CBSCBS’s Survivor in 2000 (which was actually based on a prior European format), the emergence of the reality programming genre has been a life saver for many a broadcast and cable network. From American Idol to Keeping up with the Kardashians to who knows how many Real Housewives shows (not to mention oddities like When Animals Attack), this programming is usually relatively low-cost compared to traditional drama series, sitcoms and motion pictures, with no actors (at least not usually professional ones) and no expensive screenwriting talent. The sports world seems to supply an endless amount of this type of programming, including pre- and post-game coverage, new “live event” programming like the NFL Draft and “combine” (yes there’s a passionate audience for watching prospective players get weighed) and behind-the-scenes programs such as Hard Knocks and 24X7 on HBO.

3. Larger than life personalities

“You can’t tell the players without a scorecard” is an old ballpark adage, but today if you can’t tell the players without a scorecard you probably aren’t interested in going to the park anyway. The NBA revolutionized sports marketing by emphasizing star (and star personalities) like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and particularly Michael Jordan, and the seemingly endless drama concerning LeBron James has moved even beyond that. I suspect more people may know Dennis Rodman from his man-crush on North Korea’s Kim Jong-un than his ferocious rebounding. That focus on the personal and private lives of star athletes runs across virtually all sports and personality types now, not only the good (the hagiographic treatment of Derek Jeter surrounding the All-Star Game), but the bad (Tiger Woods and his marital problems) and the ugly (Lance Armstrong and his painful Oprah appearance).

English: LeBron James playing with the Cleveland Cavaliers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

4. Never-ending “seasons”

One of the big challenges that the broadcasting industry has faced for nearly a generation is the seasonality of the television calendar. “The New Season” always began in the fall, and was completed by the end of the May sweeps. The summer was left to re-runs, which mostly still worked when there was nothing else to watch. (Although by 1998 NBC found out it was a little too late to try this in its famous pro-re-rerun campaign: “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!”) Even in cable, the economics of content production create limited “seasons” of typically 10-13 episodes for even the most popular programming. Yet in sports, you not only have at least some sports going year-round, but now each sport also has its own hugely interactive “off-season” focused on trades, the college draft, and the inevitable reports of players’ run-ins with the law (a goldmine for sites like Deadspin (owned by Gawker Media), Bleacher Report (Time Warner) and TMZ (AOL)).

5. For digital media marketers, a geo-targeting dream

Another perceived “holy grail” of digital marketing is getting to the right consumer in the right place at the right time. For mobile in particular, the ability to deliver content linked directly to your pinpointed location is a huge advertising differential. That content could range from direct coupons for fan-oriented merchandise to subscription offers to Buzzfeed or Vine-type quick videos. Can you think of a better platform for geo-targeting if you’re Verizon or AT&T than when 75,000 people, sharing at least some very passionate interests, are congregated in one place for hours at a time? Yes, you do need the game for that to happen, but the game doesn’t need to generate as much direct money when all of these “ancillary” opportunities are presented. You can be sure your caring fans will keep engaged.

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